Where did the week go?

I've been busy creating my monthly SNL kit.  And . . . seeing that it is July . . . there's always the Christmas in July festivities over at DSP.  I made a bow (always good to practice those!) and a background paper for that as well.  I've also been working on another kit of my own.  I found a color palette that I really like . . .

Isn't it pretty??  It definitely has a very bright and summery feel to it and inspires me to create something in bloom!

Speaking of blooms . . . there's lots of things going on in my garden as well.

The mini sunflowers are ready to bloom . . .

and the bee balm and coneflowers are just bursting with color . . .

and even more White Swan coneflowers in another part of the garden are looking great too!

I'm off for now and looking to possibly finish the kit that I am working on . . .

Until next time . . . Happy Creating!

~Connie

I’ve been a terrible blogger lately . . .

Been spending most of my time in the garden, doing a lot of cleaning around the house and driving back and forth to baseball practices and games. The new storm door is up and so is the new vinyl fence! The house is spic and span and we’re ready for a party!

My older son is turning 21 so we decided to throw him a party and invited the whole family. We haven’t done one of those for quite a number of years so we thought that being a significant one, he deserved it. He’s been studying really hard and will be done with finals tomorrow. I’m sure he’s looking forward to start his summer vacation too!

I haven’t done much creating of late. I did my monthly SNL kit that was a bit of a challenge for me this time. The theme is Art Journaling and the color palette was beautiful, but I seemed to have a hard time thinking of things to put in the kit and putting elements together. All in all, I think it turned out pretty cute!

I bought some new little decorative bird houses at Michael’s that I found in the $1 bin. I did manage to prime them but I have to pick a day to paint them. It seems my color scheme in the garden is turning more towards yellow, white and blue with touches of red here and there. I have a red Astilbe which is just starting to send up some shoots, but the red clematis didn’t make it through the winter. The red chrysanthemum I bought a couple of years ago has sent up new shoots so now I have about 5 of those. I’ll probably also sow some red Nicotina.

My white azalea started to bloom this past week too and looks beautiful!

I’m sure I’ll post more pictures of the garden in the weeks to come.

It’s Blackhawks fever over here at my house! With Chicago’s 5-1 victory over Vancouver last night . . . . we’re advancing to the final 4 and anxiously awaiting word on when the series against San Jose will start.

Hope to be back again soon.

Until then . . . Go Blackhawks! (and Happy Gardening and Creating too!)

Still in the garden . . .

and enjoying my time there!  Bought some impatiens to fill in some areas at the front of the border.  They are a pretty mix of white, pale pink, pale lilac and a deep pink.

Anemone are popping up all over the garden right now as well.  I moved clumps here and there and even to the front garden last fall and they look fabulous!  I just love these little white flowers!

The Snow Maiden Iris are looking good too!

It's been raining off and on these past couple of days so I've been in the mood to read more as my creative spark seems to be limited to figuring out what else I want to plant and do in the garden.  I started Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy the other day and am hoping to read some more today.

Hope to be back again soon!

~Connie

In the garden . . .

I've been spending most of my time this past week in the garden.  Dividing plants that I didn't take care of in the fall, moving things around here or there and scrutinizing what goodies are coming up where.  I try to mark most of the perennials and bulbs, but sometimes the markers get faded or they get moved from trying to clear debris in the flowerbed.  LOL.  Makes me laugh . . . hubby and I go for a stroll in the garden every morning trying to decipher what plant this is or what plant that is . . . and looking for open space so we can plant some annuals or something new.  We've got quite a bit going on with the grape hyacinths in full bloom already . . .

and Tete a Tete daffodils . . .

I even found some white hyacinths at Home Depot.  They just smelled so good!!

All in all things are looking really great so far.  Hubby even agreed to get some phlox as well . . . said he really liked the blue in this one . . .

I'm certainly looking forward to spending more time out in the garden and can't wait until the new privacy fence is up!  Hopefully, it will be up later this month or early in May.

I was having some bad luck with a certain lilac bush that I purchased a couple of years back so I had to purchase another.  I'm happy to say that this new one did survive the winter and came back this year.  It's still too young to produce any flowers though.   I had a lilac at the other house and it just filled the yard with a wonderful fragrance all through Spring.  As I was coming home today and parking the car in the garage, my neighbor gave me cuttings from his lilac.  He happened to be out cutting some for his daughter's birthday and decided to give me some as well.  What a sweetie!  I've always thought it was unusual that half of the bush has white flowers and the other half has purple . . . and they smell so good too!

Hope you're all enjoying Spring and taking advantage of the beautiful weather.  It's such a wonderfully promising time of the year!  Maybe that's why both my boys were born in the Spring . . .

Well then . . . until next time . . . Happy Gardening and Happy Creating!

~Connie

A "happy" accident

I was able to play with paint today . . . unlike the other day, I wasn't planning on it, but was able to get a couple of hours time by myself.

I started with a 12" x 12" sheet of linen acrylic paper and just started using up the paint that was stored in my palette from last week's painting session.  I started light with the yellows and then added brown to the edge and spritzed alcohol here and there to "move" the paint.  Then I used green paint over a stencil and had to let it dry for a bit.  I scraped in some white lines with an old credit card and also scraped off the edges to get other areas of white. Finally, I took a charcoal pencil and traced some of the lines from the stencil.  Here's what I got:

After dinner, I decided that I would try to work some more on this.  At one point I put some leaf green paint and Jacquard Lumiere in pearl white on my palette paper and took the brayer to it and put that on the painting as well.  Then I decided that I wanted to stamp some leaf images with the pearl white paint, but it didn't show up very well on the painting.  Instead, out of frustration, I started stamping the pallette and it looked so cool that I took a picture of that instead.  Here's what my "happy" accident looks like:

I'm gonna let this dry and tomorrow will see about adhering it with gel medium to the painting as another layer and continue working on it.  Hopefully, I'll have something more and interesting to show you again tomorrow.

Until then . . . enjoy!

Painting today

I was able to block in the colors on the "body" painting that I'm working on for the CED2010 January challenge. I had to do some reading about color mixing for skin tones first however, and still need to do some more reading and experimenting with the paint. Here's what I have done so far . . .




















The background looks much greener here than it really is (my photography skills aren't all that great) but I figure if the pictures are not blurry, it's good enough for me. In actuality, the background is more of a muted green. I really like the way the draping is coming along! After looking at it more and more, the right arm just isn't right and she looks a little squat and chubby. I'll have to work on this more . . .

It's has been a little hectic around here these past couple of days. I voluteered to do the site re-dress for SNL which I did on Tuesday and am awaiting to see the results. This is the first time I've done it and I'm really excited and anxious at the same time! As soon as it's up and running, I will post a link to it from here.

Hope to be back soon with more creative projects and happenings.

Until then . . . Happy Creating!

Happy New Year!

OK . . . so I mentioned that I'll be taking part in the Creative Everyday 2010 Challenge and have found this interesting tool for finding your word of the year. Leah mentioned it and has a link on the site for a free download from Christine Kane. I've downloaded and printed it out and will be settling down for the night to read and write and find out just exactly what my word of the year will be!

We had some more Christmas shopping to do today. There's the family party for my husband's side of the family on Sunday so tomorrow I'll be wrapping and baking again and hopefully have some time for creating as well.

I'll show you what I have done so far on the painting I've been working on . . .

I'm really happy with the sky! The building needs work and so does the foreground. Hopefully, I'll be able to get some more done tomorrow. I already have something else rolling around in my head as the theme for CED2010 for January is "body" . . . but I really would like to finish this before I start on anything new!

I just might also be working on an SNL kit as well . . . I was thinking that I might put making kits on the back-burner for a while . . . but I really like the theme and colors for January's kit so I think I might have to find time for that as well. This is the color swatch we have to work with . . .

They really are some pretty colors that I don't think I'll be able to resist!

Well . . . I'm off for now . . .

Hope to be back tomorrow!

Back to school . . .

OK, now that the kids are back at school and all that supplies, clothes, doctor appointments, etc. have been taken care of, I'm hoping to have more time to create. I did manage to create another kit for the SNL'rs. There's bonuses that are given out for the monthly challenges and they're always looking for donations from the members. I think it came out pretty cool! Here's a preview of it . . .



I used part of the color swatch that came in second place for this month's challenge but used black to anchor it.

I'm on the hunt for color swatches once again. When I find one to inspire me, I'll be creating a freebie for you folks here. If you have any requests or suggestions, please leave me a comment and I'll try to accommodate you.

Hope to be back again soon.

Lots of things happening here

I'm so excited! I submitted a color swatch (first time) for this month's SNL kit and it won! The theme is wildflowers so I picked colors of spring green and hyacinth purples and daffodil yellows. Here's the color swatch:





Aren't they beautiful?! I can't wait to see what the other SNL'ers create!

I've also entered the DET Contest at DSP and submitted my LO already. I can't upload a copy of it here yet but if you check out my DSP Gallery link to the right you'll find it there. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Now, I just have to wait until about 11:00 pm on March 5th to find out if I can continue on to the next round. I'll let you know!

I'm off for now to see what else I can come up with for this month's SNL kit!